Spiritual connection to land

[Chron]

Do you believe in it?

Family members of mine (who aren't 'spiritual' types) have often said they felt something when they visited certain historical battlefields in Europe, and more broadly parts of England/Ireland when they've been there. Certain landscapes of the British Isles are also evocative for me. By contrast I've been struck by a lack of any spiritual connection to the Australian landscape/countryside. Beyond the sights and smells I'm accustomed to and feel like home, from my perspective it feels as though the land is completely spiritually empty, as though nobody ever lived here before Whites, despite that I know it's been inhabited for tens of thousands of years. I suppose Aborigines would feel differently towards it (if they have any complex emotions), so if this spiritual connection to land exists, it's very much ethnic/ancestral based, some kind of ancestral memory perhaps.

What do you think?

Absolutely. Looking over the cliff over the ocean that my family fished for hundreds of years, or being in the mountains that my family lived in for who knows how long definitely gives me a bit of a spiritual feeling. But, on the other hand, maybe it isn't ancestral. I get these same feelings with places I'm pretty sure my family isn't from, like the valleys around Issyk kul, and various places in the Levant, to name a few. So I have no idea what causes it. Maybe it is ancestral, maybe it's our brains doing funky subliminal stuff.

[Aila]

There is a Finnish saying, that goes something like this:
“A house in the middle of forest, all windows with forest views”.
And that was the kind of house I was brought up in.

When I lived in a house deep in the rainforest, I woke up every morning thinking:
“God, I love this place!”

[Peterski]

Another time I had a strong feeling of alienness to the land. I was just once in America and that was in Montreal.

I was aware of that every tree, every grass, every ant, every bird, every mushroom, in short: every living being in the nature (but cultivated crops and animals) were completely alien to me (that now for the first time put my feet on that ground) and all my ancestors for 100,000s of years. And to see all that people in Montreal, knowing that they - except the Native Americans - have no deeper connection to that land and all that living nature, was a very strange feeling.

I imagine that my ancestors (and also their's) the last 10,000 years will in some way also evolutionary have been used to and adepted to the flora and fauna in Europe, which includes the thousands of sorts of funghi and bacteria in the soils and at the plants. I know that the flora in America is resembling and also evolutionary related from hundreds of millions of years ago, but quite nothing is really the same.

I thought: Nobody sees it at a first glance, but this city could as well have been a colony on another planet.

American whites are likely selected positively for the trait of adventurousness (less adventurous people stayed in Europe while more adventurous emigrated to the New World):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone - typical example

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Do you believe in it?

Family members of mine (who aren't 'spiritual' types) have often said they felt something when they visited certain historical battlefields in Europe, and more broadly parts of England/Ireland when they've been there. Certain landscapes of the British Isles are also evocative for me. By contrast I've been struck by a lack of any spiritual connection to the Australian landscape/countryside. Beyond the sights and smells I'm accustomed to and feel like home, from my perspective it feels as though the land is completely spiritually empty, as though nobody ever lived here before Whites, despite that I know it's been inhabited for tens of thousands of years. I suppose Aborigines would feel differently towards it (if they have any complex emotions), so if this spiritual connection to land exists, it's very much ethnic/ancestral based, some kind of ancestral memory perhaps.

What do you think?

If I dropped you in another part of the world that had a resemblance to whatever place you think you have a 'spiritual connection' with and told you, "Creoda, this land is where your ancestors once walked," you'd feel the same 'spiritual connection.' In other words, it's in your head.

Your family members feel typical of people aware of what happened on a battlefield they're visiting: horrible things happened there. Lives were lost. Maybe their own ancestor had their throat cut in the field. It tends to leave an impression.

What you're revealing is a tendency towards mysticism. There is nothing complex about these emotions. You can find the same beliefs among primitive peoples (Native Americans go on about their spiritual connection to the land, for example).

It's always the children of immigrants who have these 'complex emotions' about their ancestral lands. It's almost never the people who actually live there. For them, it's life a usual.

[Gallop]

I prefer to feel spirituality with the people I care about, the Earth would swallow you up at the slightest opportunity.

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Two differing ways to relate to the land:

I agree with the racist except I would have pointed a rifle at him to let him know I mean business. He can fuck off. I'll find my daughter myself. I know my own land.

[Grace O'Malley]

Very true about the difference in the skies. Those low, cloudy, almost brooding skies of Ireland are extremely evocative, sounds corny but I know instinctively that's the landscape I belong to, it's not even about aesthetic attraction. I walk around the Australian countryside a lot, and even though it's homely/familiar in one sense, you do always feel a stranger deep down.

It's funny but we always had to read that Dorothea Mackellar poem at school, and I could never relate to it. I thought how the hell could you love a brown country?! It seemed perverse, even though I can understand the sentiment/reasoning of it now. I wonder how much of it is genuine or just nationalism. Maybe it takes just a few generations of being on the land to feel differently.

My father always felt alien here in Australia. He never settled and was always restless. He always wanted his remains to go to Ireland and that is where his resting place is.

This poem by Yates always makes me think of my father. The call of your homeland.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

[Creoda]

If I dropped you in another part of the world that had a resemblance to whatever place you think you have a 'spiritual connection' with and told you, "Creoda, this land is where your ancestors once walked," you'd feel the same 'spiritual connection.'

Possibly, but no other places have been evocative like that for me. And it's not about areas where specific ancestors lived. I've been to those particular towns/villages, and they do not stand out in particular in my mind.

Your family members feel typical of people aware of what happened on a battlefield they're visiting. Lives were lost. It tends to leave an impression.

If it were simply that, I don't think they'd consider it remarkable. What they were talking about was some weird melancholic force or something that overcame them while there. As an aside, my mother said she felt that at Culloden (despite having no Scottish link), but contrastingly at the site of the Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire, in the Wars of the Roses which she's always been fascinated by, she felt nothing. Then years later it was discovered that the traditionally thought site was wrong, and the actual battlefield was some distance away.

What you're revealing is a tendency towards mysticism. There is nothing complex about these emotions. You can find the same beliefs among primitive peoples (Native Americans go on about their spiritual connection to the land, for example).

Not really, I never said I necessarily believed in it as a supernatural thing. Nor am I religious or care about ghost/demon stories. Just thought it was an interesting topic. Who's to say the Indians are wrong about their connection?

[Celestia]

mm mm mmm something moth with eyes as wings. As American girl you probably know that there is place in New York called Rockaway Beach. Folks like to take long walks there, breathing in the steel-gray gloom. Unlike the famous song by Ramones leads you to presume, the sun hardly ever shines at Rockaway Beach. But do not blame the sun. Be thankful to the clouds for the beautiful moment by the sea in complete solitude. The sea merges in with the sky to form one steel-gray wall. It is hard to see where one starts and the other ends. It storms in as one distorted and ambient wall of mass, that rolls over you like a harbinger of some great flood. It grabs soul and washes it away. It is not words or not even poetry. It is music; it does not explain, it is. Pure and raw emotion. Perhaps you like the honesty of music? It has been said: of that of which you can not speak of, you must remain silent. Or just music? As substitute maybe. And please do not try to understand it. Please do not like music. Abandon it altogether. Hate it. Like different sounds produced by different animals, birds, trees, fields of corn, wind and the ocean. Either by themselves or in conjunction. Going against common sense the feeling of liking music, in most cases, has very little to do with music itself. It is rather that music seems to act as a temporary filler to a inner void. In any case, it is in actuality more of a distortion leading you away from your inner self, than any kind of vortex pulling to inner depths. At night it is more frightening to listen to music, because the eyes do not see. At night it is more lovely to listen to music, because the eyes do not see. At night you can hear the music better, because the eyes do not see. At night you can not run away from music, because the eyes do not see. You can only clumsyly wobble away like drunken sailor or Walkind Dead person. It is similar to some more carnal portions of human existence, it is the search for the right frequency. It is trigger of a revolver that ignites the machinery, and end result is a flame. And there is no flame without what, and no what without a what. Fire? Spirit? In ancient times the blacksmiths were thought to be the big brother's of the shamans, and their forges were like wombs. The air blowing in to a forge, was enhanced breathing, the language of the carnal. And the sound of a gun firing is the exclamation mark to my point.

I felt like I just read the first paragraph of a book. That was nicely written. I think you may have mistaken me for someone who is always cheery though lol. I tend to find comfort and beauty in solace.
Perhaps it is my Scandinavian roots kicking in. lol

[hurtuv]

I prefer to feel spirituality with the people I care about, the Earth would swallow you up at the slightest opportunity.

In the lightyears of the void of space perhaps that would be true. In this planet full of life though, by comparison, it's quite the opposite.